The Troop by Nick Cutter

Published by Gallery Books on February 25, 2014

This is the second tapeworm novel I’ve read in the last few months. As trends go, I doubt that tapeworms are likely to replace zombies, but they are sufficiently creepy and disgusting to lend themselves to thriller/horror novels. The Troop gives the tapeworm theme an interesting spin. The story involves a bunch of boys stranded on an island. It’s sort of like Lord of the Flies … with tapeworms.

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs had taken his troop of 14-year-olds to Falstaff Island for a camping trip. They believe they are the only humans on the island until Tim encounters Tom Padgett: a seriously thin man who is driven to eat, constantly and insatiably. And he’ll eat anything. Tim, a doctor, is disturbed to notice that something seems to be moving under the man’s skin. He doesn’t know that Padgett (known in the press as The Hungry Man or Typhoid Tom) is “a runaway biological weapon,” the product of an experiment gone wrong. Or maybe it hasn’t.

Fortunately, Boy Scouts know they need to Be Prepared, even for monster tapeworms. The Scouts are a diverse bunch. Three of the five are nice enough, one is a typical alpha pack bully, and the fifth is almost as monstrous as the killer tapeworms. Teachers expect to see Shelley’s “slack and pallid moon-face staring up at them from an oil-change pit at Mr. Lube” but Shelley seems destined for a crueler life.

True horror lies not in external threats but in the darkness that lives within us. True horror is reflected in the way people behave under extreme circumstances and in the extreme behavior of people who have been entrusted with leadership. Nick Cutter occasionally moves away from events on the island to reveal the cause of Padgett’s tapeworm infection and the government’s response to it through a series of journal entries, hearing transcripts, and magazine articles. Those passages remind us that not all monsters are artificially created.

Cutter has a flair for the truly vile, which is what readers generally want in horror fiction. His description of an unorthodox surgical procedure and its aftermath is vivid and intense. Death permeates the novel but the story is ultimately about the tenacity of life. Cutter uses the plot to address difficult moral questions but, in the end, a depressing story is enjoyable because those questions are presented through well drawn characters.

RECOMMENDED

Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach

Published by Mysterious Press on January 7, 2014

Red 1-2-3 is built on a clever premise. An undistinguished writer of crime fiction who happens to be a serial killer decides to write an instruction manual for serial killers. He has selected three redheads as victims to illustrate his methods. He intends to commit and memorialize the perfect crime because, well, he's getting old and feels the need for a legacy. By killing three women within hours of each other, each in a different way and after warning them of their fate, the writer believes he will take his place in the annals of serial killer history and launch his book to bestseller status.

Each Red receives a letter in the mail that begins with the opening of Little Red Riding Hood and ends with "You have been selected to die." One Red is a lonely doctor who performs remarkably unfunny standup comedy routines as a hobby. One is a former teacher and current lush whose husband and daughter died in an accident. The third is an angry high school student. They could form a support group for distressed redheads (which is sort of what they do). The would-be killer, of course, is the Big Bad Wolf. His wife, who is blissfully ignorant of her husband's hobby during most of their marriage (or perhaps she's willfully stupid), is Mrs. Big Bad Wolf.

John Katzenbach creates a strong psychological profile of the killer, making him a more substantial character than any of the Reds, who tend to be stereotypes. The sullen teenager is the most competent of the three Reds, but her notion of how to deal with an anonymous letter is an eye-roller. The simplest solution would be for each intended victim to change her hair color, thus screwing up the killer's theme and perhaps sending the killer in search of a new plan, but that never occurs to them. They instead contrive a plan that only the looniest residents of Thrillerworld would attempt. I guess going to the police (only one of the three does so, and only once) would be less interesting but it would certainly be more sensible than the plan the Reds hatch. Fortunately, they aren't dealing with a killer or is particularly energetic or even particularly bright. He is convinced that the police will not connect the three killings as long as he commits each murder in a different way. Even if he had not sent each Red a threatening letter and You Tube video, would the police really not connect the apparently unmotivated slayings of three redheads in the same city at roughly the same time?

Unfortunately, this is a thriller without many thrills. For most of the novel, the plot lacks action and builds little tension. I spent quite a bit of my reading time wondering when the killer would get out of his writing chair and actually kill someone. You know the story is getting dull when you start rooting for the killer just so something will happen. The ending is a huge anti-climax. Despite Katzenbach's fluid writing and the novel's interesting premise, the story didn't grab me. The fundamental problems is that Katzenbach didn't make me care what happened to the redheads. That's a serious interest-killer in a novel that pits intended victims against a serial killer.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey

Published by Blue Rider Press on February 20, 2014

Deep Winter is a character-driven crime novel. The crime is secondary to the impact it has on the characters. The story has a Cormac McCarthy feel in its exploration of troubled and isolated lives. Few of the characters feel they have any ability to control their destinies. Events overtake them and they don't cope well. The plot is simple but filled with tension that elevates sharply as the story nears its conclusion. A significant amount of killing takes place, yet the story acts as a reminder of the value of life -- and of living it without judgment, pride, or selfishness.

Now middle-aged, Danny Bedford and Mindy Knolls have known each other since their childhood in Wyalusing, a town they never left. Deep Winter begins with Danny standing in Mindy's trailer looking down at her dead body. The narrative then moves back a few weeks, allowing the reader to follow the events that precede Mindy's death.

Danny suffered brain damage as a child. While the book is written in the third person, the chapters that follow Danny tend to use simple declarative sentences and language when echoing Danny's thoughts. The thoughts of the other small town characters are far from eloquent but the prose becomes more interesting in the chapters that do not focus on Danny.

Some chapters follow Deputy Sheriff Mike Sokowski, a redneck jerk who spends his days belittling Danny, using Mindy, and dealing weed. We meet additional characters in the novel's second half, most involved with law enforcement, who help carry the novel beyond Mindy's death. Whether justice will be done, or whether injustice will prevail, is the question that drives the plot. Yet what constitutes "justice" is often unclear, a point Deep Winter makes with force.

Whether people can change is another strong theme of Deep Winter. Some can, some can't, some won't. Many of the characters are torn apart by guilt. Other characters don't let themselves feel guilt. Key characters reach a point that requires them to make a choice about something that is fundamental to their lives, a choice about the kind of person they want to be. Some choose wisely. Others refuse to recognize the ability to choose. Diversity in character development and a recognition that different people respond to a moral crisis in different ways is the novel's strength. Readers looking for likable characters will find some in Deep Winter, as well as a truly despicable character and some who are flawed but worth rooting for. Samuel Gailey juggles the characters with more skill, and gives them greater depth, than is common in a first novel. He deserves an audience for his debut effort.

RECOMMENDED

The Martian by Andy Weir

Self-published digitially in 2011; published by Crown on February 11, 2014

The Martian is written in a lively voice that I can easily imagine belonging to a frustrated engineer. It isn't an eloquent voice but it isn't meant to be. Mark Watney has a right to feel frustrated as he narrates his story, having been (understandably) left for dead on the surface of Mars by a crew escaping from a hellacious sandstorm. The base in which the crew planned to live is intact but the communications dish Watney needs to contact Earth is destroyed in the storm. Another crew is scheduled to land (although far from his current location) in four years. Watney has enough food to survive for about a year. Seems like the poor guy should starve to death if he doesn't choose a more peaceful death by morphine, but Watney turns out to be a resourceful scientist who doesn't easily give up on life.

New characters are eventually introduced as the action shifts to Earth and to NASA, which eventually notices that the Rover left behind on Mars seems to have moved. The parts of the story that take place on Earth are surprisingly strong in their own way, and a sharp contrast to the individualistic story that Watney tells. Like the rest of the novel, the Earthbound story seems realistic, from the distress that people feel about Watney to the distress they feel at managing a public relations nightmare.

On one level, The Martian is a survival story, sort of an updated Robinson Crusoe on Mars without the monkey. But it's also a pure science fiction story, with a refreshing emphasis on science. There are no zombies here. At the same time, explaining the science doesn't bog down the story, as science-heavy sf too often does. This is fundamentally a story about people and crisis management. Andy Weir put an enormous amount of thought into The Martian, from commemorative stamps honoring Watney that need to be recalled to overtime funding for NASA scientists who work desperately to save his life.

The Martian strikes me as a novel that should have broad appeal. Fans of geek-speak who think science and technical innovation are the most important aspects of sf will find loads to enjoy. Readers who think sf needs to have human interest to differentiate it from a technical manual will find it here in plentiful supply. Readers who only want to spend time with likable characters will love Watney (he's a funny guy). Even readers who like action-filled plots should be happy. The action doesn't consist of battles with aliens using laser swords but the struggle for survival creates a fair amount of tension and keeps the story moving at a good pace. Readers who crave zombies will be disappointed but I suspect most sf fans will be as happy with The Martian as I was.

The Martian ends with a discussion of human nature. Humans can be truly awful to each other, but most of us have an instinctive desire to help one another, even to help complete strangers when lives are at risk, and to risk our own lives to do it. Through Mark Watney, Weir reminds us of our better natures. According to Watney, people who care about other human beings "massively outnumber" people who don't. I think that's probably true. It's a great reminder, movingly illustrated in an emotionally enriching story. I suspect The Martian is destined to be regarded as a classic work of sf. That's pretty remarkable for a book that was originally self-published.

RECOMMENDED

Promise Land by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro

Published by Simon & Schuster on January 7, 2014

Once the exclusive province of books, the self-help industry has expanded to seminars, coaches, facilitators, and other enterprises (some resembling Ponzi schemes) that are dedicated to charging fees in exchange for telling people how to achieve goals or live better lives. You can even email questions to self-help advisers who will answer them for a fee. Although it doesn't seem like "self" help if you are paying a coach to tell you what to do, the industry will happily teach you how to self-help your way to romance, popularity, self-esteem, emotional wellness, satisfying sex, good health, a higher income, a more pleasing body shape, well-behaved children, and pretty much anything else you think you need.

Self-help is nothing new. As Jessica Lamb-Shapiro reminds us, Emerson and Ben Franklin provided the kind of advice that is now regarded as self-help. Thomas Jefferson and Thoreau stressed the power of positive thinking. "Success literature" (covering everything from etiquette to proper diet) thrived during the Victorian era and Samuel Smiles' 1859 self-improvement guide, Self-Help, was hugely popular.

The one-size-fits-all advice that self-help books dispense tends to be superficial, if not glib, in denial of the idiosyncratic diversity of human existence. They are filled with advice that is contradictory and flat-out wrong. They encourage unrealistic expectations (no matter how much you want to achieve a goal, some goals are unattainable unless you have talent). They are based on specious theories -- e.g., "the law of attraction": if you think really really hard about something you want, it will come to you -- that are wholly unsupported by evidence or rationality.

Still, there may be (largely hidden) value in something like "the law of attraction," to the extent that it encourages people to focus their thoughts and to understand their desires. There can, in fact, be value in just about anything if you're willing to dig for it. If a self-help book helps you overcome a fear or gain confidence or think about your problems in a new way, perhaps you found the self-help book that is right for you (while understanding that not all of them will be).

As Lamb-Shapiro points out, some people swear by the wisdom they derive from self-help dispensers while others dismiss self-help as, at best, harmless but lame pop psychology or, at worst, unethical and potentially harmful. Maybe the people who thrive on self-help books need a lot of help or maybe they just enjoy (and benefit from) the inspirational stories that are the backbone of the self-help industry. Lamb-Shapiro brings a tone of playful objectivity to her exploration of the self-help industry, concluding that it fills a national need even if individual self-help practitioners can be "flaky, inarticulate, and deceptive."

The book's weakness is its failure to develop a defining theme. At times, it seems to be intended as a humorous dissection of the self-help industry (surely an easy target) but if that was the goal, it isn't funny enough to succeed. At times, it seems intended as a serious analysis of self-help and it does deliver insight, as in her comparison of serious thought (C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed) to self-help fluff (Grieving For Dummies),  but it lacks the intellectual heft and clear organization that scholarship demands. Although subtitled "A Memoir," Promise Land meanders aimlessly from one topic to another and only occasionally touches on Lamb-Shapiro's relationship to father, a psychologist who developed and sold dull, noncompetitive family games that were a form of self-help but who avoided talking to Lamb-Shapiro about her mother's suicide. If Promise Land is meant to be a memoir, it tells us very little about the author's life.  Lamb-Shapiro does manage to present a balanced if scattered overview of the self-help industry that is neither laudatory nor condemnatory, but a stronger and more purposeful focus would have made Promise Land a better book.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS